


down down down, i went (and higher and higher the flames ascend)

by labime



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Aunt/Nephew Incest, Character Study, Episode: s8e02 ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’, F/M, R Plus L Equals J, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 12:26:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18691477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labime/pseuds/labime
Summary: He has to turn his eyes away from her before he looks too long.





	down down down, i went (and higher and higher the flames ascend)

**Author's Note:**

> so i was working on a sequel to my post-reveal jonerys story but writer's block is the worse and so have this instead? i hope you guys like it.
> 
> many thanks to emaiyl on tumblr for betaing.

He wants her, and as he has come to discover, that fact is invariant and independent from circumstances—be they propitious or unfavorable.

It would be immeasurably easier if the pull to her that yanks him forwards as she moves was one born of the desire of the flesh, a vice that makes fool of men like all ailments ought to, something to be looked upon with indulgence, a demonstration of shortcomings of which most are guilty. But it is not.

For all the certainty that she is beautiful in that unearthly manner—pale pale pale cotton-white skin draped under the black and red of a fallen dynasty and silver hair that seems to have been dunked into the argent of the moon, violet eyes a chasm swallowing the light when her pupils widen in anger and laughter and sadness and triumph and chain his gaze to hers—he knows it is not why he chokes on a feeling he cannot name but is sure to know when it burns white-hot in his chest, just like she does, and he has to stop breathing when she is too close to him, even when she is at a decent distance from him, even when his restraint is self-imposed. He has to turn his eyes away from her before he looks too long.

Jon knows lust, knows the sting of desire for a woman’s body, recalls clearly how it grew inside him the longer he was accustomed to the wildling he never found lovelier than when he would glance up to see the coils of her red hair flying with the wind, unruly around her face, and on whom he would think back with a broken kind of fondness, even years after the first time they coupled in that cave, even after the abrupt end to their dalliance; how he had shamefully dwelt upon the red priestess' tempting seduction, how it stirred his cock; remembers the first time he felt it when he walked in on Theon and his prostitute, who did not bother to cover her nudity, and giggled as his cheeks and neck turned a vicious crimson.

It is not what he feels for her.

Daenerys is talking, venom-sprinkled words severe and resentful with vehement bitterness against the man who once slaughtered a mad king who was deserving of his fate, who was a tyrant, who was a murderer, who was a father, who was the last shield protecting a wife big with child and their children. The children would be exiled, would run until their legs could not carry them, hunted like prey, and like animals they scurried and hid, begged with their palms upturned for protection and for food and for a roof under which they could sleep. A dynasty turned to brittle bones of past glory.

His sister—cousin—and his queen—lover, _aunt_ —talk about the wrongs Jaime Lannister did to their respective families, and, Ser Jaime’s faults exposed by Daenerys and Sansa, Jon ponders over the fact that he has now twice as many reasons to be angered, his blood woven with the dragons and the wolves the kingslayer injured. He remembers his childhood, remembers Old Nan’s stories and Maester Luwin’s lessons and learning, unconcerned—for violence and war have a different meaning in the minds of boys that have never known of either—how the Dornish princess and her children had been murdered after the fall of her husband.

He wonders, if he had known then, would he have mourned them like he did Robb, these siblings he knew not? Would his dreams have been branded by flashes of broken skulls and spilling guts, little bodies tossed to another king who played at another farce of justice, whose rebellion had killed more than it had saved?

Would he have looked at his father—uncle, uncle, uncle, the unwanted reminder pitilessly tugs at his tired mind—and seen no honor but deserted fields of bravery, felt the double-edged blade of loyalty when he continued to serve a king who had peered down on the crushed, mutilated children and relished in their deaths, called them spawn and rewarded the murderers?

He hears the sound of Daenerys’ voice even after sentences become words he can’t distinguish, his incessant thoughts a roaring blur, but he does not glance up, training his eyes on the kingslayer instead, the expectant stares of the few lords gathered around for the trial alerting him that something is amiss. He realizes they are silent, and realizes the cause for it is his own silence, his words turning to ash in his mouth, his attention unwillingly diverted to other matters.

Jon sighs, thinks of the swift swing of his sword, of the heaviness that feels comfortable in his hands as he raises it, how the kingslayer scarcely deserves anything else, but the war they are waging is bigger than matters of feuds and politics. They are fighting an enemy whose army swells as heads roll and Ser Jaime’s death would be worthless if it was caused by his hand or the fire Daenerys favors for executions, but on the battlefield, he could be of use. On the battlefield, he could help.

The living have to move as one, or else they are doomed, and they cannot dispense with any fighters, their survival hanging on a thin—already trimmed, almost severed, about to break—black thread.

“We need every man we can get,” he says.

“Very well,” Daenerys says, accepts his counsel despite her own, clear opinion on the matter, that hastily-made verdict she certainly already decided upon before the beginning of the trial, and he hardly expects anything else from her—the infant whose life had a limit with the first breath she took, the silver princess turned beggar turned slave turned fire made solid by sheer determination to live, the barren queen who has birthed beasts of legend—not after knowing what he knows.

The kingslayer is handed his weapon back by a soldier who unmistakably distrusts him with his queen’s safety, and, with the barest hint of derision mingling with genuine consolation, the accused thanks the queen and bows, and the trial is finished.

Chairs scrape against hard flagstones once Daenerys arises, Sansa the first to go, soon followed by lords who look with palpable hatred at the ruined once-golden knight dripping in decaying gray, as if breathing the same poisoned breath he exhales might mottle their own honor.

She turns to him, the woman who is so many things to him that he cannot name them all, straight-backed and tight-lipped, a clear indication of her displeasure, and it is a bittersweet irony that he only now realizes that ever since his calloused hand first held hers, squeezing, fingertips lightly brushing her soft skin he later tasted, that it has become an instinct he isn’t sure she is aware of herself. Her hand jerking to his as she searches for comfort, his own rubbing, and curling around hers. But not anymore.

The rush of liquid desire he could explain away, but the sense of belonging, of comfort when the world tilted and she was the one tethering him, he could not. He preferred not to think about the reciprocation of his feelings, on their journey to the North, the idea of asking her dreadful, the prospect of rejection a blazing dagger to his battered heart, and it is only now that he knows with an odd certainty that could leave him gasping, that she does return his affections, that she needs him, too.

He walks away before he can meet her eyes.

 

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

 

The room is slowly vacated, walking corpses heading to their graves.

“Let’s get some rest,” he’d said, as if the battles to come could be won. He had little hope they could, the prospect of death something he had come to accept with disturbing ease.

For the longest time after he came back from a place he doesn’t remember, after being stabbed by brothers who should have protected him, he felt a ghost living amongst the living, veins filled with chilled water, numb and void of the coursing emotions that once pierced him. And then, he fought for his home—he sent men to their deaths, he lost his brother, he bathed in blood and mud and grime—and it was with a kind of startling realization that he recognized he was alive as he struggled to breathe and rise above the tide of bodies, and that he wished to remain so, gulping mouthfuls of wintry air. The rest came back after, gradually, tortuously.

And then he met Daenerys, and it poured back all at once, a cloying surge of sensations, his fiery temper clashing with her own, their stubbornness a match. And he despised her, and he desired her, and he came to trust her, and he wanted her, and he still wants her with the violent hunger of an animal starved, his dry throat yearning for everything she offers so easily.

She had let him slip into her life, had shared power and stories with him, and he had craved the intimacy of it, something that ran deeper than the contact of skin on skin and bruising kisses. Here is a secret—and Jon prides himself for having very few of those—he has kept trapped with clawed fingers in a box he never meant to open again, once he learned how much of her blood was in his, as close to him as the man he has called father had been: he still craves her.

His heartbeats obstruct his windpipe when she moves towards him, even as he doesn’t meet her eyes, like a craven he’d never imagined becoming, and it’s in a similar manner that he shrinks back and tries to ignore her almost imperceptible wince when he does, the regal mask she wears an efficient protection.

He feels it, the weight of the news he kept from her, unfamiliar and heavy in his dry lungs like stones, and he suffocates on something that stings too much like disloyalty, something he is not used to, which worsens the sentiments he guards tightly locked beneath his ribs, brewing and scalding the longer he keeps that revelation to himself.

He is ineffective at this, deception and secrets and schemes but it is of little matter because Sam and Bran have left him with few options and one way or another he is going to play that meaningless game of thrones in which he keeps finding himself, along with other blood-stained pawns.

He resents them for that, his brother and his best friend, the latter more than the first, for Bran is not in his right mind, a broken mind in a broken body, but Sam knew exactly what actions he was taking, had planned every word and anticipated every reaction.

“Your Grace,” he says, and it is hollow, his voice hoarse, and she notices it, for how could she not—easily, that’s how, because no one else did, not his men or his friends nor his siblings, all too preoccupied with their own hopes and woes—and he wishes for anything but the quiet look of sorrowful disappointment that mars her features when he makes his way to the door.

She seems too vulnerable, the familiarity, the happiness he’d slowly dug out of her smashed and butchered, lips slightly parted and eyes blinking, questions whirling in them alongside incredulity. She’s hurt too, he can see it—because he watches her, because discipline is harder when she is involved—even when she takes a deep breath and regains her composure, her spine straight, raised solidly into hard, long iron.

He hears her walks away after he leaves, brisk, as if hurrying, a seep of cold momentarily bursting from the door she opens and closes.

That night might be their last, mere hours to taste the dying embers of life before slicing frost smothers all the light it can grasp, and she wants to spend it with him, in his arms one last time, desires a fog in which they could gladly get lost, talking about their childhoods and the future they might never have and might never share, or wandering off in the halls and recesses of the castle he knew for having explored it thousands of times and would be able to see blind, or lying in bed, secluded from duty one last time as they let hours slip away until their eyelids close on the sight of each others' faces before a sweet, lethargic sleep claims them.

He wants it, but it simply cannot be—not now, maybe never, like all fever dreams and sinking songs—and the knowledge is broken glass flung into wet, open wounds.

 

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

 

The slate air is heavy with ambient dampness, glacial wind gushing into the crypt with a booming whistle, wrapping him up, tangible and harsh, as if drenching him in a bulging water-filled barrel. Every move he makes sends back a magnified echo, light frolicking with shadows as it moves unevenly across his mother’s face, cold and dead and carved in stone, nothing but an expressionless statue placed amongst the rest of her family and himself, surrounded by a thick curtain of darkness in that lonely hall of ghosts, and yet he barely takes notice of it all.

He observes, seeking something, a trace of the woman she had been, trying to steal secrets and truths from the distorted stories her short life had been made of. He has grown up in the North after a war that left the Seven Kingdoms in a tattered peace and remembers the grand stories he’d heard as a child, listening with keen attention to the tales of abduction and treachery and valor.

The most beautiful flower of the north had been stolen and dishonored, her valiant brother and father killed by a madman who sat atop his throne unchallenged, until the good people of Westeros rose and rebelled against the unfairness of the king’s justice, Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark leading them to a faithful victory. Much had been lost in that war, the greater casualty possibly being the maiden who had been raped and died miles away from the home she longed for as she was kept prisoner of the prince whom all had mistaken for an honorable man, but King Robert had ruled fairly and pardoned gracefully the many houses that had deserted his cause.

Jon wonders how he could have believed in those stories, once.

The motives of men in war are never so straightforward, their morality too foggy and misshapen to be so simple. The dawn of King Robert’s reign had been marked by the same crimson of the mad king. Innocents became traitors, killers and rapists and oath-breakers became heroes, duplicity was hailed as nobility. And his mother—his mother, Jon feared he would never know her.

He could ask Bran for veracity, demand he present the page of history unwashed and unrefined, with all the ugliness of the truth, see the words written on blood-soaked paper without subterfuge, but it would change nothing at all.

Stories do not make people. Stories will not replace the absence of a mother deep in his childhood. Stories would never compensate for the yearning of a little boy, ill and bedridden, who had wished more than anything for a mother’s hand stroking his curls, cradling his slumped form, murmuring calming reassurances as his body trembled, turned cold, turned hot, and cold again.

He derived no satisfaction from the knowledge Bran imparted on him, only a relief that quenched his disgust when his brother told him, voice so detached it appeared lazy, that Lady Lyanna had gone willingly with Prince Rhaegar. That it had been love, that they had married, that his father had whispered her name with his last breath as life spilled from him.

Love is like war, violent and unforgiving and never simple, and therefore his brother continued, their discussion lasting well into the night, and talked about a prophecy the dragon prince had believed in—fervently, obsessively—holding it firmly until it molded with his cracked bones, so deep it could not be detached from him, the salvation of the doomed Seven Kingdoms, of which only a few knew.

Gaze fixed on the features of Lyanna Stark’s face, Jon speculates on how much his mother knew of her lover’s intentions when she left her home with no words for the family that loved her dearly. How much had the presage of calamity incited the prince when he made the offer to take her away from an unwanted future, trapped with a husband she did not want and forced into a role she refused, a broodmare in everything but name.

Jon could have asked, but retreated into his quarters instead, for it made no difference in the end, what colored their minds when they made the reckless, selfish choice to run away, leaving trails of blood behind them and mayhem in their path. They had stepped out of reach only for a while, but eternity is sometimes only a few moons, a few nights, even.

He wonders if the taste of infinity had been worth it when constellations exploded in their mouths.

It might have been. It is addictive, the kind of vertigo that seizes one’s head, the vivid impression of flying—no, _floating_ , held only by a lover’s loose embrace, luxuriating in it until growing light-headed. The fall is always the hardest, invariably. And yet—

He is alerted of her arrival by the subtle change of air, would have noticed her steps sooner if it wasn’t for his inattention. He had half-dreaded to see her at last once before the battle, half-hoped she would come despite his insistent avoidance, and now that she did he is glad for it.

She halts. He offers her a smile, a sad thing she has no reason to hoard, and yet she does. There’s a demure hesitancy to her posture, her steps faltering slightly, almost cautious, as she comes closer to him. He expects her to demand answers, her temper volatile and flaring hot and quick, but there's a finite line to everything, and with life escaping between one's fingers like elusive sand, all are less prone to discord.

Every word spoken could be the last his voice would utter; that had been a constant reminder as Sam continued to pester him about his parentage and his claim and Sansa continued to insist on independence, aided by the many traitorous lords who, he didn't doubt, wouldn't mind removing him from his position, the peril awaiting them ever-present in his mind.

Daenerys waits—for his permission, he understands, and nods—before looping her arm around his.

There's a moment when his grip on her wrist is too hard—the need to for contact is liquid sun-soaked fire drumming with his speeding pulse, and he craves the sweetness of her skin, the tang of her hair as she bends over him to kiss him—and Jon knows he might hurt her, and it's the only thing that loosens his grip.

He still feels her, even through the thick layers of leather and fur he is wearing. It is comforting, almost lulling, the moment stolen like they always are. He is the thief and she is the accomplice, and they are suspended in time, like it does not belong to their lives.

And then she talks. About the brother she has never known but must have loved for what he represented for her, a light into the darkness of her immediate family. Her voice is laced with disappointment when she speaks of the rape of Lyanna Stark, of her own disillusionment and he does not take the decision to speak the truth as much as he does it reflexively, her unintended slander something he cannot abide, no more then he can let her believe in those ropes of lies.

He takes a deep breath and it isn’t fortifying or reinvigorating, it is only air. He buries his urge deflect the inevitable, to live for a few more hours like the unwanted bastard of Winterfell, an ordinary boy who had grown into a man who ascended the ladder until he became a monarch, still unfavored but with a mission. Now he is an empty shell waiting to be filled by a story that isn’t his, by a family he doesn’t belong to, with a new name sewn into him.

“He didn’t,” Jon says. “He loved her,” he says, still staring at his mother’s statue.

He tells her the truth. He splits his armor, he gives up his weapons, he bleeds his sincerity and—The tenderness she showed him falls apart like ribbons, gossamer mistrust hardening her face, the rise and fall of her chest becomes rapid as she swallows audibly and recoils. He had expected her shock, remembers his own colliding into his ribcage, leaving him nearly speechless, nearly breathless, the hard-edged reality cutting like deception.

“That’s impossible,” Daenerys affirms, as if saying it with enough conviction might alter the immutable evidence. It won’t. He tried.

“I wish it were,” Jon answers, the reminder that it is his aunt he is talking to sharp behind his teeth.

But such a thing isn’t a concern for her, he discovers, after he commiserates with her and accepts her suspicion for his brother and his friend, for the convenience of it all, and she sternly talks about the Iron Throne, about his claim and their house. He frowns. She doubts his loyalty, his allegiance, even when he proved it to her, when he publicly pledged himself before witnesses and told her, later, in private, that he would fight for her, for her cause, for her throne and crown, would lay his title and kingdom at her feet, at the same height she asked him to bend the knee.

The fury, brilliant and unadulterated, that ignites behind her eyes is not easily quelled. She is a Targaryen through and through, unlike him whose fire burns hot and soon enough dies down, and in the same vein of her ancestors before her, her anger is great, her pride and ambition greater still.

If they had more than one night, if he had more time to talk to her, to explain to her that he has no desire for that throne, she would stalk off and come back on the morrow, the night having cleared her head, and maybe they would talk, and what they would say Jon doesn't know and doubts he ever will for he hears the horn blaring the arrival of the army of the death and the beginning of a war he will most likely not survive.

He gives her one last nod, heart thrumming with trepidation like always before a battle, and despite their position, despite what will happen, she gives him nothing but a curt jerk of her head, no reassurances or love on her determined, focused face. And Jon swears he hates her, the control he's tried to exert on his emotion slipping as resentment floods him.

He's not even surprised of the intensity of it, being with Daenerys is accompanied by excesses, gorging himself on her kisses and her touches, breathing in her scent until he could differentiate it from any others in a crowded place, the blankness inside his head as she laughed, the world narrowing down to her glimmering eyes and the shape of her lips. It was coherent that his hate would be just as turbulent. Nothing had been simple between them, from the beginning to the end—that is approaching fast, so fast—he knew it would never be one of these simple love of the songs, and yet—

It is a horrible thing to go in battle with rancor tightening around his throat.

He swears he won’t look back.

He does.


End file.
